AustLit

A semi-fictional travelogue falsely attributed to the famous pickpocket and convict-constable George Barrington. A Voyage to New South Wales is comprised mainly of material plagiarised from the colonial officer John Hunter's published journal An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island (London: Stockdale, 1793), but it also contains a number of fictional episodes revolving around the character of the ostensible author, George Barrington, which lent added interest to the work. The most popular and accessible, if not the most reliable, of the early accounts of the New South Wales colony, the plagiaristic A Voyage to New South Wales was itself pirated in numerous editions and versions, and was translated into French, Russian, Swedish and Spanish.